It so chanced that, not long after the accession of the house of Hanover, some of the brown, that is the german or Norway, rats, were first brought over to this country (in some timber as is said); and being much stronger than the black, or, till then, the common, rats, they in many places quite extirpated the latter. The word (both the noun and the verb to rat) was first, as we have seen, leveled at the converts to the government of George the First, but has by degrees obtained a wide meaning, and come to be applied to any sudden and mercenarychange in politics.bamboo rat, any American rat of the genus Neotoma, especially N. Floridana, common in the southernunitedstates. Its feet and belly are white.